Well, there's a hour-and-a-half of my life I shan't get back!.. Simply awful-wooden acting (standing stiffly and looking vacantly into the middle distance does not give you poise-it merely looks like you're suffering from haemorrhoids) stilted dialogue (and the wrong language used, at that-I don't think I heard a single use of 'shall', 'should' or 'I am', but rather 'will', 'would' and I'm. People just didn't speak this way-let alone the glottal stop used instead of a final 't'...)-It might have helped if Shaun Evans hadn't grunted every line through his nose, or did he just have very bad cold during the whole shoot?.. At least Cpt Leversuch (Alex Beckett) and Mr Wallace (Craig Parkinson) managed to speak properly-the rest of the cast could do with a course of elocution lessons...
Too much makeup, bad costumes (this was 1782, not 1982-I half-expected Adam Ant to crawl ito view)... I suppose the set design was up to scratch, but the outdoor shoots were awful-this was not how pre-Regency London looked at all...
There was a time, you know, when the BBC could do this sort of thing standing on its head-now... Meh... Hallie Rubenhold, who co-wrote the screenplay, and wrote the book upon which it was based, calls herself a historian?.. Polite Society simply didn't behave like this in public-in private, behind closed doors, perhaps, but face and honour were all (see Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron, who conducted a scurrilous affair in public 30 years later)... Lord Rochester had been dead for over one hundred years when these events occurred...
I've saved the worst for last-who, in (we assume) their right mind imagined that Natalie Dormer was right for this part?.. In addition to looking wrong, and dressing wrongly (see above), she was utterly incapable of delivering her lines without either a languid drawl, or a simper-I'm not sure which was worse... She wasn't even capable of walking properly in costume (see the final scene)!..
Oh, and one final thing, BBC, please stop showing British judges banging gavels in court!.. It has never happened, nor will it ever!..
I think we should demand our licence-payers' money back...
